Women Made Up Over a Quarter of All Business R & D Employees in 2020

According to the 2020 Business Enterprise Research and Development Survey ( BERD ) , 27 % of U.S. business R&D employees were women. For all manufacturing subsectors and nonmanufacturing sectors with at least 100,000 R&D workers, the female share of R&D employment ranged from 14 % to 47 % . Women represented about half of all R&D employees in just two detailed industry groups that meet this employment threshold : pharmaceuticals and medicines ( 2017 North American Industry Classification System [ NAICS ] 3254, 51 % ) and scientific research and development services ( NAICS 5417, 50 % ) . Machinery ( NAICS 333 ) and transportation equipment manufacturing ( NAICS 336 ) had the two lowest shares of female R&D employees in this group of industries. Women made up about a quarter of the R&D employees in the information sector ( NAICS 51 ) and in the professional, scientific, and technical services other than R&D sector ( NAICS 54 less 5417 ) . Recent data show similar variation by field for degrees awarded to women in 2020.
Source: NSF - Statistics on U.S. Science and Engineering Resources - Category: Statistics Source Type: news